With
famous and characteristic irony, Hume lampoons a particular form of reasoning:

“In every system of morality, which
I have hitherto met with, I have always remark’d, that the author proceeds for
some time in the ordinary way of reasoning, and establishes the being of a God,
or makes observations concerning human affairs; when of a sudden I am surpriz’d
to find, that instead of the usual copulations of propositions, is, and is not,
I meet with no proposition that is not connected with an ought, or an ought
not. This change is imperceptible, but is, however, of the last consequence.
For as this ought, or ought not, expresses some new relation or affirmation,
‘tis necessary that it shou’d be observ’d and explain’d; and at the same time
that a reason shou’d be given, for what seems altogether inconceivable, how
this new relation can be a deduction from others, which are entirely different
from it.” (A Treatise of Human Nature, Bk. III, pt. 1, sect. 1)

I will
offer a brace of arguments to suggest that, while formally problematic in
certain highly artificial or abstract examples, such reasoning is quite natural
and, interpreted with a modicum of charity, seldom if ever fallacious in
itself. Taken together, I think these arguments give us good grounds for not
worrying much about Hume’s problem.

(1) My first argument rests on the observation
there is robust, though tacit, morally normative content, properly and
naturally understood, embedded in most ordinary language of human consequence
(including Hume’s “…observations concerning human affairs…” above). Take the
following argument:

Here a
merely factual premise yields a strong inductive, and morally normative,
conclusion without fallacy, since the term ‘mother’ describes a complex
biological, affective, and normatively charged relationship out of which such
obligations almost always flow. We could, if we chose, treat it as enthymemic,
and render it deductively valid by supplying the missing premise:

1’ All persons have obligations
toward their mothers.

To do this
risks unsoundness, however, for we might well identify at least a single
counterexample (a particularly heinous mother, who actually tried and failed to
murder person Y at birth, and has done everything else in her power to
undermine person Y’s subsequent life). This singular example, however rare in
real life, falsifies the categorical supplied premise. Better I think to treat
the original argument as a very strong induction. It becomes cogent if we
individuate the first premise (say that I am person Y and my mother is person
X), without the need for supplied premises. Of someone who refuses to accept
it, we might well say that she simply fails to understand the actual
significance of the term ‘mother’ as we use it in normal human discourse.

(2) My second argument for deriving ought-statementsfrom is-statements
begins by observing a tacit normativity in the selection of premises from among
an indefinite field of potentially salient facts. My reasoning looks like this:

1. There is an effectively unlimited
number of facts (articulable
states of affairs)2. A nontrivially large subset of
these facts is potentially
salient in reasoning toward any substantive
conclusion of human concern. (sub-conclusion)3. A reasoner must bring
perceptivity and judgment to bear on
the process of selecting among potentially salient facts to employ as premises
in an argument of human concern.4. Perceptivity and judgment are
irreducibly laced with normativity.5. Therefore, all substantive
reasoning of human concern has an
irreducibly normative component.

One may
well object here that I have here conflated epistemological with moral
normativity, and thus that my argument turns on an equivocation. I plead not
guilty, on the grounds that (at least) when a matter is consequential to
humans, the epistemological process by which we determine the salience or
relevance of facts is itself imbued with at least some moral normativity.
Perhaps developing the Pythagorean Theorem was an epistemically pure process,
but as soon as we employ it to design a building, which might (if our
calculations are careless) collapse and injure someone, moral significance has
entered the room.

I argue,
then, that determination of salience is a normative process in the relevant
sense, and irreducibly so. A full spelling-out of the criteria by which we
select among possible facts plausibly yields robust (if tacit) premises
expressing normativity – ought-statements
that will not go away, and without which the argument itself is pointless. Of
course, if any of the operative terms are of the type in my first example
(e.g.: ‘mother’), this is fairly obvious, but I hope I have shown that it is
subtly the case even in apparently purely factual examples.

Here is
another example of the sort of reasoning Hume finds “altogether inconceivable”
(though I am not certain that word means precisely what he thinks it does):

1) This rock is crumbly.

2) (therefore) We ought not to climb
on this rock.

This
argument might seem to Hume to require some tacit premises (to the effect that
crumbly rock can be dangerous, that one ought not take unnecessary risks,
etc.). But no one in a context where this would be a normal thing to say would
fail to understand the reasoning on offer. There are of course many other
potential premises which are evidently not germane – that the sun is 93 million
miles away, for example – but quite a few others nearer to hand about which it
is not so easy to say. The fact that my mother has an exaggerated fear of
injuries from falling, in response perhaps to a childhood trauma, and thus that
she will be excessively worried about my taking risks with this crumbly rock,
may or may not be a relevant fact in my calculation of what I ought to do in
this circumstance. How heavily should I weight the fact of my mother’s fears in
this deliberation? The difficulty (though not, I think, impossibility) of
answering this question illustrates just the sort of deliberative judgment that
imbues almost all apparent pure-fact reasoning with irreducible normativity.

David
Braden-Johnson raises a challenge to what I have said so far, on the grounds
that Hume’s concern is only with deductive arguments, so my inductive treatment
of the argument about motherhood would be beside the point. But Hume himself
rejects induction altogether as an instance of reason. He views what we call
induction as belief based on past experience which (since reason gives no
guarantee that the future will resemble the past) is not sanctioned by reason
at all. Perhaps this is a merely antiquarian point, since Hume is most probably
mistaken about induction. It does, however, sharpen Hume’s position: on his
account, no genuine (i.e.: deductive) reasoning process can get us from purely
descriptive premises to prescriptive conclusions. I contend that this may be
true in the abstract, but as there are no “purely descriptive” premises
“concerning human affairs,” it is a moot and uninteresting point.

I intend
my second argument above to show, not that Hume is mistaken about pure deduction, supposing there is such
a thing, but that the question is moot in practice. By the definition of
deduction, nothing can emerge in the conclusion that was not already contained
in the premises, so unless there are at least tacitly normative elements in the
premises, a normative conclusion will be invalid. Fair enough. I contend,
however, that due to the irreducibly normative process of determining the
salience of premises, selected from an indefinitely large pool of potentially
salient facts, the requisite normative background already tacitly infects the premises
of any interesting argument.

To
illustrate by analogy, consider early-modern claims of scientific research to
be free of extra-scientific values. Biologists, for example, presented
themselves as simply studying the world of life that was before them, answering
the questions that nature posed (“carving nature at its joints,” a carnivorous
image from Plato’s Phaedrus much
beloved by Roger Bacon). Professional training effectively determined,
paradigmatically, what sorts of questions and research techniques would receive
support and approval within the biology community. Such selectivity is at once
inevitable and a principal reason for the success of the discipline as a
science, lending it the specialization and focus to make progress. Equally
inevitable, however, is the exclusion of legitimate biological questions that
lie too far outside the paradigm shared by the community. Consider, for
example, Harvard biologist Ruth Hubbard’s remarkable work on the
historical/sociological/biological reasons for male-female size difference in
modern humans – a question that never came up (it was taken, wrongly as we now
know, as a biological given, not as a question in need of explanation) when all
prominent professors of biology were men.

My point
is not to criticize science – such systematic focus on some questions to the
exclusion of others is both necessary and salutary for the process of
scientific inquiry – though it is equally healthy and indispensable that it
learns to listen to those affected or neglected by its exclusions. I only
indicate by way of illustration the serious normative import of biology’s
process of selecting methods and questions, and hence of its reasoning about
them. Traditional biology’s deductions may have been valid, but they were only notionally
free of humanly consequential normative content.

Matt Silliman teaches philosophy at MCLA

_______________________

The Problem with
the Is-Ought Non-Problem

Reply
to Silliman

David Kenneth Braden-Johnson

Against (most
interpretations of) Hume, Matt Silliman offers two arguments “for deriving
ought-statements from is-statements,” or, in the common parlance of the debate, bridging the is-ought gap. He claims that reasoning in this fashion is
“quite natural” and “seldom if ever fallacious in itself.” In the end, he advises us not “to worry too
much about Hume’s problem.”

I think there is much to worry about here, not the least of which is the
prospect of falling silent before those who would fallaciously derive ethical
justifications from convention, God’s will, popularity, the “nature of things,”
and the like. But my more immediate
worry is that Silliman fails to grasp the axiomatic status of “Hume’s problem,”
and so unwittingly employs the very position he condemns. I suggest, therefore, that both of Silliman’s
arguments fail, and for the same reason: by insisting on the “tacit
normativity” of premises designed to provide support for “any interesting
argument,” each assumes (with Hume)
the very unbridgeable gap he hopes to traverse or ignore.[1]

In addition, there is a permanent tension at the heart of Silliman’s
analysis: it remains unclear whether he intends to offer counterexamples to
Hume (that is, “non-fallaciously” bridge the is-ought gap), or merely to
eliminate the gap from all or most human discourse. At any rate, in what follows, I will argue
that he fails to accomplish the former and ought not to pursue the latter.

The
First Argument

Silliman’s first argument rests on the observation that the premises of
“any interesting argument” contain “tacit, normative content” providing an
inferential bridge to a “normative conclusion without fallacy.” He provides this example:A1

1. Person X is
person Y’s mother.

2. Therefore, person Y has
obligations toward person X.

Being a mother, he writes, is a “normatively charged relationship” which
typically involves obligations. The
tacit normative content emerges as we parse the term “mother,” and can be made
explicit in the following way:A1’

1. Person X is person Y’s
mother.

2. All persons have
obligations to their mothers.

3. Therefore, person Y has
obligations to person X.

Recognizing the deductive and potentially unsound character of A1’
(given the remote possibility of a mother toward whom no one has obligations),
Silliman suggests that we would be on stronger ground to interpret A1
inductively and with reference to a specific person, as in the following
version:A1’’

1. Y is Matt’s mother.

2. Therefore, Matt has
obligations to Y.

But this presents us with a puzzle.
A1’’ remains deductive in tone and (beyond those familiar with the
particulars of Matt’s life), logically indistinguishable from A1. The assumption is, of course, that Matt has
an obligation-saturated relationship to his mother, supplying the “tacit
normativity” of premise #1 made explicit in a new premise #2:A1’’’

1. Y is Matt’s
mother.

2. Matt has
obligations to his mother.

3. Therefore,
Matt has obligations to his mother.

But A1’’’ is both deductive and circular, effectively eliminating
premise #1, the purported source of the argument’s “tacit normativity.”

Alternatively, rephrasing A1’’’ as an induction, we have:A1’’’’

1. Y is Matt’s
mother.

2. Most persons
have obligations to their mothers.

3. Therefore,
Matt probably has obligations to his mother.

While A1’’’’ avoids overt circularity and deduction, the argument (like
A1’’’ before it) fails to deliver the promised goods; that is, provide us with
“an argument for deriving ought-statements from is-statements.” (Though I will not pursue the issue further here, the inference fails the test of ethical non-vacuity as well; see footnote 1). It is, plainly enough, an argument that
(fallibly, inductively) derives an ought statement from another ought
statement. Bridging is and ought is,
apparently, impossible in the absence of an ought on both sides of the bridge,
whether that structure is inductive or deductive.[2]But now our metaphor has lost all sense,
since the bridge was invoked in the first instance as a means of getting from
exclusively is-statements to an ought-statement, while no bridge is required to
infer ought-claims from a mix of claims containing, tacitly or explicitly,
other ought-claims.

The
Second Argument

Silliman’s second argument for bridging the gap is related to, but somewhat distinct from, the first in which the tacit normativity of the premise(s)
eliminated the need for a bridge (and so validated Hume’s view). Now Silliman locates the normativity not
(merely) in the premises themselves, but in the very selection of premises. The
basic idea is that the “epistemological process by which we determine the
salience or relevance of facts is itself imbued with at least some moral
normativity.” He proffers on this basis that “all substantive reasoning of
human concern has an irreducibly normative component.”

Unfortunately, this claim is equivocal between (a) seeing the process of selecting premises as essentially normative (in any "interesting" context) and (b) seeing the logical
functioning of premises in an argument as essentially normative. At times Silliman seems to be suggesting
both; yet in the context of “non-fallaciously deriving ought-statements from is-statements,” we rightly concern
ourselves exclusively with the latter.[3] Furthermore, the normativity of (a) is logically distinct from (b). To see this is so, we need only reflect momentarily on the very example Silliman provides of the "epistemically pure" development of the (no doubt interesting and substantive) Pythagorean theorem. The typical normative epistemic imperatives
that determine the salience or relevance of facts (be careful, be systematic,
avoid contradiction, etc.) that govern argument construction and direct our
inquiries have no bearing on the normativity of the argument or its components. That is, no amount of selectivity, focus, bias, salience, or any other purportedly normative characteristic of the process of argument formation, has any determinative impact on the normativity of the argument. Indeed, Silliman seems to admit as much as he claims that nomativity associated with the theorem enters the inferential scene only as we apply it, with the proper care of course, when “designing
a building." That we
generally care about the safety of homes is undeniable, as is the value we
place on consistency and deductive certainty, when we claim that, for any right
triangle, the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of
the other two sides.[4] That we ought to be careful when arguing, that the contextual application of arguments in science and elsewhere can be for good or ill, or that we generally care about the content and
construction and application of our arguments, are all equally obvious. Putting aside these equivocations, have we any reason to suppose that the normativity of argument construction produces or
amounts to a normativity of content (reflected in at least one premise) that
might serve to bridge the inferential gap between is and ought? Silliman offers but one brief example:A2

1. This rock is
crumbly.

2. Therefore, we
ought not to climb on this rock.

He suggests that, to any clear-headed reader, the choice of premise #1
has been directed by some interested party, and so, despite all appearances to
the contrary, is not a “pure fact.” Its
impurity bespeaks its (tacit) normativity.

Note that what Silliman claims is true not of the premise, but of the
argument as a whole understood as a kind of cryptic, hypothetical imperative
(“If you want to remain safe, you ought not to climb on unsafe rocks!”). Let us agree that premise #1 either is or is
not a “pure fact.” If it is not -- if it
tacitly contains some element of normativity -- then Hume’s is-ought gap
remains untouched as we proceed validly to infer an ought from an ought. Hume's gap is bridged only where the premise
set remains exclusively empirical or “pure.” I will take up below Silliman’s apparent suggestion that we (as in A1
and its progeny above) argue for premise #1’s contextual or holistic impurity
in light of the intentions of its author. Just now, let us assume that it remains a pure,
empirical, non-normative fact. Only in
that way might we offer a counterexample to Hume. The key, as Silliman suggests, is in the
selection process. Was this pure fact
chosen for some interested reason? No
doubt it was, as a rational means to
secure the intended end – a safe climb.
I reconstruct the fuller argument as follows:A2’

1. This rock is
crumbly.

2. Crumbly rocks are unsafe for climbing.

3. We want to be
safe.

4. Therefore, we
ought not to climb on this rock.

Premise #2 links crumbliness with lack of safety, and #3 introduces our
desire to find a safe place to climb.
Note that all three premises remain purely descriptive; in particular,
#1 remains a “pure fact,” despite its role in making the conclusion seem attractive. So, while no tacit normativity infects the
premise set, the explicit normativity of the conclusion seems to gather some
kind of support from the purely empirical premises. Have we, in A2’, finally discovered a viable
is-ought bridge? Not at all. As it stands, the inference is clearly invalid,
since none of the premises assert or (individually or collectively) entail “one
ought not to climb on the rock.” The
normative force of the conclusion is parasitic, not on any kind of “tacit
normativity” of the premises (there is none), but on the unstatedrationality of
choosing an effective means to one’s desired ends (something that is missing
from, and the source of the invalidity of, A2’). That is, this is not an instance of moral
reasoning at all, but an example of prudential reasoning from a hypothetical
desired end to an effective means of securing that end: desiring, or valuing X,
and seeing Y as the best or only means of acquiring X, I “ought” to do Y. If you want to be healthy, you should eat your
vegetables. If you want a safe climb, and if you ought to do whatever keeps you
safe, then you should stay off those rocks: if both A and B then C. The
conclusion has binding normative content only for those who accept the
italicized antecedent of the conditional claim. And, once we do, we commit
ourselves to an explicitly normative premise.

Once again, Silliman has not been able to forge a successful inferential
bridge from is to ought. A command or
bit of prudential reasoning is not an argument.
A2, therefore, is either a hypothetical imperative (“you ought to do Y
if you want X”) dressed up to look like an inference, or an inference with an
explicitly normative premise. I began
with the suggestion that Silliman’s arguments vacillate between bridging and denying the importanceof
Hume’s gap, and that neither approach held out much promise. I hope to have shown that A1 and A2 and their
extensions either assume, along with Hume,
an unbridgeable gap or substitute commands, explanations, contextual applications, or a notion of
means-end rationality for arguments.
Given the axiological nature of the is-ought gap when applied to logical
derivations, Hume’s problem is our problem, too.

Thanks to Nicole K. Braden-Johnson for her many helpful comments and suggestions.

Is morality too demanding - "requiring us to do
things that we literally cannot do, things that go beyond our abilities"?
Peter Vranas finds this claim "hard to swallow" (Vranas 197) and so
defends a version of the ought-implies-can principle, OIC, against several
objections, including arguments based upon putative counterexamples, as well as
conceptual arguments.

Vranas does excellent work in building definitional
clarity into his treatment of the issue. He articulates OIC as synchronic and
time-indexed, since its elements (obligations, abilities, opportunities) are,
an analysis which seems right to me. He offers a clear deductive argument
supporting OIC:(P1)
Obligations "correspond" to reasons for action: If an agent has an obligation to φ, then the agent
has a reason to φ.(P2)
Reasons for action "correspond" to potential actions: If an agent has a reason to φ, then φ-ing is a potential action of the agent.(P3)
Potential actions "correspond" to ability plus opportunity: If φ-ing is a
potential action of an agent,
then the agent can φ.

Thus:

(OIC)
Obligations "correspond" to ability plus opportunity: If an agent (S at a given time t) has an (objective, pro tanto) obligation to φ, then
the agent (at that time) can
(i.e., has both the ability and the opportunity
to) φ.

Vranas also does much good work in "clearing the
field", deftly undercutting several purported grounds for attacking OIC -
legal arguments (199), psychological arguments about obligations to feel (174),
arguments based upon natural-language confusions of the sense of
"ought" (178), exotic hypotheticals involving moral luck (179), and
arguments which fail to realize that the grounds for rejecting OIC are also
grounds for rejecting the ought-implies-logically-possible principle (187).

For all his rigor in defining and addressing the problem,
however, Vranas does not apply the same standard of linguistic precision to a
crucial relation in his core argument - "corresponding to". In his
primary expression of the argument (171-172), he appears to define
"correspondence" in terms of deductive entailment (as expressed in
if-then statements). [Compare Plato's difficulty with metechein, to
partake of.] I believe this leads Vranas into difficulties which his article
leaves unaddressed, and which leave the door open for continued critique of
OIC.

After identifying Vranas's argumentative flaw, I will
offer an argument against OIC which relies on a simple, real-world
counterexample, rather than exotic thought experiment scenarios involving
brainwave monitors, morally confused Nazis, superhuman typists, or strangling
canaries.

Vranas's Error

By implicitly defining "corresponding to" as
logical entailment, Vranas necessarily commits himself to the deductive
consequences of his premises as stated. Unfortunately, this commitment makes
his accounts of potential, reasons for action, and ability too restrictive to
account for certain real-world counterexamples.

Specifically, I want to take a closer look at Vranas'
(P2). Vranas himself recognizes this premise as a likely locus of contention
(173), but believes that he has mustered sufficient argumentative merit to
defend it. I disagree.

First, let's express (P2) formally for purposes of
clarity. The premise(P2)
Reasons for action "correspond" to potential
actions: If an agent has a reason to φ, then φ-ing is a potential action of the agent

can be simplified toIf R,
then Por

All R
are P.

Of course, then, the logically equivalent forms are
equally true:

Contrapositive:
All non-P are non-R.Obverse:
No R are non-P.

Some Moral
Intuitions

Now, let's consider two intuitions regarding moral agency
and human potential. A common, though unstated, intuition may be that

(G1) The
scope of human action is no greater than
the scope of human potential (or, All A are P).

This seems plausible. Surely, it would be nonsensical to
claim that human acts could somehow extend beyond humans' own capacities.

We also presume that

(G2) The
scope of moral responsibility extends to
at least some consequences of human
action (or, Some C are R).

That is, we can properly ascribe moral responsibility to
not only the immediate acts which human agents perform, but also (in at least
some cases) to the consequences of those acts, particularly when the agent acts
intentionally and with foreknowledge of those consequences.

Now, what is interesting about (G1) is that it is false,
or at least in need of clarification. Human agents are in many cases capable of
engineering causal chains leveraging ordinary human capacities or potentials to
cause "superhuman" effects. For example, I have the (ordinary human)
capacity to break a small glass vial by dropping it to the pavement on a New
York City sidewalk; depending upon the contents of that vial, my action (which,
again, itself falls well within the scope of ordinary human potential) has the
direct effect of killing billions of humans, an effect which far exceeds
ordinary human potential, but for which nevertheless I am morally responsible.

(G2) prompts us to realize that it is not just that I am
morally responsible (and blameworthy) for the act of dropping the vial; I am
also morally responsible for the consequent deaths of billions, even though it
is not within my human potential to kill billions. We live in a world where
humans in the aggregate can act to cause tremendous, morally significant
effects; but given our technologies, such possibilities arise not just in the
aggregate, but for the individual agent. The push of a button can launch a
nuclear firestorm; a computer keystroke can disable communications networks for
entire nations; and so on. While human potential is limited, we have the
creative capacity to place ourselves into causal relations with effects which
are effectively unlimited. At the very least, any adequate account of moral
responsibility must be prepared to account somehow for human moral
responsibility for effects which surpass human potential actions, particularly
when those actions are taken intentionally and with foreknowledge of the
consequences.

Let's now compare these intuitions with Vranas's (P2) and
its logical consequences. Again, (P2) states that "if an agent has a
reason to φ, then
φ-ing is a
potential action of the agent," which we have expressed formally as
"All R are P." If we unpack the contrapositive of this statement into
natural language similar to Vranas's, we see that Vranas is necessarily also
committed to the claim that

(P2-C)
"If φ-ing
is not a potential action of an agent,
then the agent does not have a reason to φ."

How does this stack up with our earlier discussion? It seems that (P2-C) presumes some version of (G1), that
is, that there is some necessary conceptual alignment between the scope of
potential action and the scope of human choice-making.

Vranas's Responses to Agents Becoming Incapacitated

In 4.2.2 (179), Vranas addresses the scenario in which a
man makes himself unable to fulfill a moral obligation to be in Boston at 9am
to get married by boarding an airplane elsewhere at 8:30am. To maintain his
claim that OIC holds true, Vranas claims that while it is "natural"
to say that the man is blameworthy for failing to show up, strictly speaking,
the man is not blameworthy for violating his obligation to show up, but rather
for violating "the obligation to
avoid doing anything that would make him fail to show up". This is
a curiously convoluted and ad hoc explanation of the involved
obligations.

In a similar vein, in 4.2.4 (182), Vranas bites the
bullet and accepts that OIC does entail that people can sometimes get rid of
unwanted obligations, with the "compensatory" understanding that, to
make it more palatable, there are "residual" obligations that
(necessarily?) arise. Such residual obligations are such as to "make up
for" the failure to meet the earlier obligation, but within the
newly-constrained capacities of the agent - being obliged to apologize for
having not shown up for the wedding.

In general, Vranas's attempt in 4.2 to account for
situations in which an agent becomes unable to fulfill an obligation falls
short of completeness, as he acknowledges:

"Admittedly
this does not establish that no cases exist in which the obligation persists
after the inability sets in, but it does shift the burden of proof to those who
would insist that such cases exist." (178)

I am happy to take up that burden. In the following
section, I describe a realistic case in which a moral obligation persists after
the agent's inability sets in. I argue, therefore, that since such a case does
exist, it is an effective counterexample to OIC.

The Drunken Pilot Scenario

Aero
Flight 311, also known as the Kvevlax disaster, was a crash in 1961
which resulted in the deaths of 25 people on board a domestic passenger flight
in Finland (Wikipedia). Investigation found that the airplane had been
airworthy, but autopsies revealed that the captain, Lars Hattinen, had a blood
alcohol content of 0.20, while his copilot Paavo Halme had a blood alcohol
content of 0.156. It is reasonable to ascribe the crash, and deaths, to the
pilot's and co-pilot's intoxication.

Let us imagine a similar case - well within the realm of
realistic possibility[5] - which
allows us to sharpen the focus of certain relevant features to consider the
moral implications of our current discussion.

Cathay Pacific Airlines schedules a 15-hour nonstop
flight between San Francisco and Hong Kong. The vast majority of the flight
path is over the open waters of the Pacific Ocean. The pilot and copilot begin
the flight as fully qualified and competent moral agents, taking off from San
Francisco with a full passenger manifest.

At time T0, the beginning of the flight, the pilot and
copilot both have a moral obligation to fly the airplane safely, and they both
have the ability to fulfill that obligation. However, at time T1, about 6 hours
into the flight, both the pilot and the copilot decide to drink large
quantities of alcoholic beverages, such that they are both physiologically
impaired. The blood alcohol content of both individuals exceeds 0.15; the CDC
describes the predictable effects of this level of BAC as "substantial
impairment in vehicle control, attention to driving task, and in necessary
visual and auditory information processing" (http://www.cdc.gov/motorvehiclesafety/impaired_driving/bac.html). Let
us stipulate that the physiological effects of the alcohol on both pilot and
copilot are the predictable effects.

By time T2, about 7 hours into the flight, we stipulate
that the pilot and copilot have both become physiologically unable to fulfill
the obligation to fly the airplane safely. The pilot remains conscious but
deeply impaired; the copilot passes out. We further stipulate that no other
individual on board the airplane has any greater ability to fly the airplane
safely. We can bring this about in any number of ways: perhaps the passengers
are all minors, or physically or mentally disabled; or perhaps in their drunken
state the pilot and copilot have locked themselves in the cockpit and broken
the lock mechanism. Feel free to fill in whatever details you like. The plane
carries sufficient fuel to complete the flight under normal circumstances;
however, there is not sufficient fuel to allow the pilot to stay in the air
until he can sober up.

The Key
Question

At time T2, does the pilot have a (current) moral
obligation to fly the airplane safely? Vranas
would say no, since ex hypothesi he no longer has the ability to do so.
He might say that he has some "residual" obligation instead. But in
this situation, what possible residual obligation is available to perform? The
ability to land the plane safely is the same ability as that necessary to fly
the plane safely, and so the pilot cannot "fall back" to an
obligation to perform an emergency landing. We have stipulated ex hypothesi
that no other available moral agent can fly the plane any more safely, and so
he cannot have the obligation to "hand over" the controls to a more
capable individual. To simply step out of the cockpit and leave the plane on
autopilot will, if anything, be more likely to cause harm, and so this course
of action cannot be a residual moral obligation – unlike a drunk driver, the pilot
cannot just “stop driving.” Perhaps Vranas would maintain that the only
remaining moral obligation the pilot owes to the passengers is to offer a
heartfelt apology.

Perhaps, following his strategy in dealing with the
wedding scenario, Vranas might claim that while it is "natural" to
say that the pilot is blameworthy for failing to fly safely, strictly speaking,
he is not blameworthy for violating his (past) obligation to fly safely, but
rather for violating "the
obligation to avoid doing anything
that would make him fail to fly
safely". So perhaps, at T2, the pilot is morally culpable for
having failed to avoid making himself incapable, but is not culpable for
failing to fly safely. How realistic is this workaround?

Let’s assume that Vranas is correct, and that at time T2,
the pilot does not have a current moral obligation to fly the airplane safely,
because he does not have the ability to do so. We have stipulated that no other
moral agent has the ability to fly the airplane safely. Therefore, at time T2, no one has a moral obligation to fly the
airplane safely. This seems prima facie strange;
but I would like to figure out why, exactly.

One source of strangeness is perhaps that the moral
weight of obligations is mismatched between the original obligation (which is
to preserve many people’s safety and keep them from dying) and any possible
“compensatory” obligation which one might ascribe at T2 (which is, at most, to
offer regret). Remember, the pilot chose knowingly to incapacitate himself from
performing his obligation; no “compensatory” obligation available to him at T2
seems comparable in seriousness. He seems to have “traded down," releasing
himself from a serious moral obligation in exchange for assuming a less onerous
moral obligation.

A second source of strangeness is that the morally
relevant situation is ongoing – not past, and not time-limited; the situation
persists, with an odd emptiness where the relevant moral agency used to be. In
most ordinary circumstances of moral agency, when agent A is responsible for
act R, our standard assumption is that A’s agency is active so long as R is
ongoing, and so long as R is in effect, A’s responsibility is also in effect.
(If I am responsible for stealing from my grandmother’s bank account, so long
as the theft is ongoing, my moral responsibility continues.) But even when a
situation continues in the sudden absence of the original morally responsible
agent, we presume both that the moral agent has ceased to exist, and the
availability of some moral agent to
pick up the mantle of moral responsibility: if a professor suffers a heart
attack and cannot continue teaching a course, we presume that the college bears
the responsibility to the students to get the course taught. The current
scenario blocks both of these avenues. We are not accustomed to a morally
significant circumstance persisting beyond the agency of the agent who bears
moral responsibility for it.

Note to Readers

Thesis XII: A
Philosophical Review is
published biannually as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical
exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of
disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially
encouraged to participate.

A third source of strangeness is that a persistent and
ongoing process of huge moral consequence (life or death of individuals) can be
morally ‘driverless’. The pilot brought about the morally significant
consequence through his action; but he cannot take any action which can undo
the consequence. In such a case, OIC absolves him of the moral responsibility,
and at most, attempts to backfill our moral intuitions with talk of
“compensatory” obligations to account for our intuitions of the pilot’s ongoing
blameworthiness. But this still leaves the core, relevant moral consequence
‘driverless’.

Humans can take actions which have consequences which are
irreversible to us. This is not a profound revelation; but we have perhaps not
fully appreciated its implications. The key relevant implication: the
consequences of our actions often escape the boundaries of our capabilities.
And so if our moral responsibilities are capped by the boundaries of our
capabilities, as OIC articulates, we must bite the bullet and acknowledge that,
contrary to our G2 intuition above, our moral responsibilities do not, in fact,
always extend to the consequences of our actions; and that we can “game” the
system of moral responsibility itself, by causing situations for which we know
we cannot properly be held morally responsible (hence blameworthy); situations
in which we will bear some lesser, “compensatory” moral obligation, within our
merely human capacities to fulfil.

Many thanks to my colleagues David Braden-Johnson, Paul Nnodim, and Matthew
Silliman for their critical feedback in this ongoing conversation.

Gerol Petruzella
is the Assistant Director of Academic Technology and teaches philosophy at MCLA

_______________________

Utilitarian
Dilemmas in the Literature of Scapegoats

Paul Nnodim

The scapegoat problem

I’m about to take issue with those critics of
classical utilitarianism who employ extreme scapegoat scenarios to demonstrate
inherent weaknesses in the system. Since I’m one of those critics, it appears I
might be, at least tangentially, arguing against myself. But how does one argue
against oneself without intentionally weakening one’s proffered claims? Obviously,
in many instances, we do not freely choose our beliefs,
but are socially conditioned to accept them. Our personal beliefs can be predicated on prejudice, sweeping
generalizations, oversimplification, false dilemmas, etc. Thus, it is hardly
surprising to see many of us struggle to grasp the idea behind raising hypothetical objections to our considered
judgements of what is true, plausible, or
morally acceptable. But this is what reflective thinking is all about.
However, my goal in this paper is not to celebrate the power of self-criticism
or self-denial, but genuinely to take a closer look at the utilitarian
enterprise and to see if there are compelling reasons for a rethink.

The term scapegoat possibly
has its origin in the Hebrew word -עֲזָאזֵל (Azazel) found in the Pentateuch. The original meaning of Azazel is hard to figure out,
but I’m willing to accept, if only momentarily, William Tyndale’s 1530
translation of the Hebrew Bible. There, he seems to break the term into ez (the goat) and azel (that escapes), hence, the [e]scapegoat: “And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord’s lot fell and
offer him for a sin offering. But the goat on which the lot fell to escape, he
shall set alive before the Lord to reconcile with and to let him go free into
the wilderness.”[6] The
scapegoat then was a goat upon whose head the priest symbolically placed the
sins of the people before letting the animal escape into the wilderness. This
ritual was part of the Hebrew ceremony of Yom
Kippur or the Day of Atonement.

[7]

Critics of classical utilitarianism often find
unconventional allies among fiction and nonfiction “scapegoat” writers. As
wide-ranging as these storytellers may be in style and scope, they share one
thing in common: Their stories are disconcerting, gruesome, and to the joy of
their philosophical appropriators, anti-utilitarian.

Classical utilitarianism

Classical utilitarianism is the principle of
“the greatest happiness or good for the greatest number.” Thus, it is an aggregate-maximizing, hedonistic, and consequentialist
ethics, since it teaches that the end of human conduct is happiness and the discriminating norms for
distinguishing a right behavior from a
wrong one are pleasure and pain. Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) was perhaps the
earliest scholar to articulate the principles of the doctrine in a more
systematic and coherent manner. Utilitarianism as a form of ethics does capture the
imagination of rational individuals. It only
says we all ought to be happy by seeking and maximizing the pleasurable while minimizing the un-pleasurable
or the painful. According to Rawls, “It is natural to think that rationality is
maximizing something and in morals it must be the good. Indeed, it is tempting
to suppose that it is self-evident that things should be arranged so as to lead to the most
good.” [8]Critics of the system, however, argue that utilitarianism
could permit gross inequalities if such
acts produce the best consequences for the majority of the people. Some of
these detractors cite fictional works, such as Ursula Le Guin’s “The Ones Who Walked Away from Omelas,” Edgar Allan
Poe’s The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket or a real-life
story, such as the Mignonette,[9] to illustrate the utilitarian jeopardy. Here are synopses of the stories.

Omelas

In
Le Guin’s story, for example, Omelas (Salem,
Oregon written backwards) is an exhilarating, quixotic, and
idyllic utopian city: a place distinguished by its grandeur, magnificent
buildings, and fairytale-like summer festivities. At the first glance,
everything seems to work perfectly well
in this city. The inhabitants are happy-go-lucky,
wealthy, and affable. However, a closer look at Omelas reveals an odious incongruity. In the cellar of one of its
buildings lives a malnourished, neglected, and grief-stricken child. This child used to scream for help, but now only
whines, her voice apparently muffled by fatigue and despair. The child sleeps
on her excrement and the sores all over her body have become septic. The cellar
where they keep the unfortunate child is as malodorous as a fetid pile of
garbage. People know about the existence of the woebegone child, but no one
dares to help her; otherwise, as they believe, their good fortunes go with the
wind. Sometimes, a group of Omelas
residents would visit the gruesome cellar to inform themselves about the
child’s fate. Initially, they would feel some disgust.
But as time passes by, they adopt evasive stances to dampen any feelings of
antipathy or any roiling of conscience. If we release the child from the
cellar, they reason, she is already too degraded to know any real joy. She has
been afraid for too long and would not rid herself of fear. Other times, a few,
sensible residents would visit the child and choose not to return home. They
would walk through the main street of the city, pass the city gate, and head
silently to some unknown place. “Each one goes alone, youth or girl, man or
woman. …They leave Omelas, they walk
ahead into the darkness, and they do not come back.”[10] Since classical utilitarianism seeks to maximize the aggregate utility
(pleasure) of the largest number of people, it would seem morally permissible
to abuse the rights of one innocent child, the scapegoat, for the greater
happiness of the many.

A
Tale of Two Richards

In Edgar Allan
Poe’s 1838 novel, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of
Nantucket, the crew of a ship called Grampus find
themselves cast away and starving to death. In
order to survive, they would have to kill one of their members, eat his
flesh and drink his blood. They cast a lot
and it falls on Richard Parker, a former mutineer. They quickly slaughter him and the rest of the crew feeds on his body until
rescue comes.

In what appears to
be one of the most bizarre coincidences in literature, 46 years later and more than three decades after
the death of Poe, a cabin boy, also named Richard Parker, became a
victim of castaway cannibalism. But this time, the story is real. In 1884, an English ship called the Mignonette
sank in the South Atlantic, possibly en
route to Australia. Its four Englishman crew survived treacherous days
and nights at sea on a lifeboat. Within a couple of days, their meager rations
ran out and they were starving to death.
Now, the cabin boy, Richard Parker who
was an orphan had fallen ill. The other crewmen conspired against poor Richard,
murdered him, ate his flesh, and drank his blood.
As they crew was anticipating whom next to kill for food, a passing boat found and rescued them. Upon their return to
England, the men went on trial for murder. Two
of them served minor sentences, while one
even walked away free.[11] As Sandel
notes, the strongest argument for the defense was a utilitarian one: “… given the dire circumstances, it was
necessary to kill one person in order to
save three. Had no one been killed and eaten, all four would likely have died.
Parker weakened and ill, was the logical candidate,
since he would soon have died anyway. … he had no dependents. His death deprived no
one of support and left no grieving wife or children.”

[12]

Conclusion

The central idea of these stories is founded on a certain
supposition. If we were offered a world in which
the majority is kept enduringly happy on the condition that they deny some
innocent citizens their inalienable rights, would it not be an offensive
conduct?Critics of
classical utilitarianism draw on such extreme suppositions to chide the system.
But wouldn’t it be clear to most rational and moral agents, including
utilitarians themselves, that torturing an innocent child or eating a sick
cabin boy to maximize the aggregate pleasure of other people is a bad idea? As a normative ethical
principle, classical utilitarianism may not defend itself successfully against
such critics, since their goal is to show in whatever way possible that the normative standpoint of utilitarianism is
unsound. However, if we were to see classical utilitarianism as an applied
ethical practice, then marginal cases would constitute weak analogies against
it. While the main thrust of normative ethics is to explore, in general, what moral lives we ought to live, applied ethics
concerns itself with the particular instantiations of those “oughts.” We, the
critics, tend to ignore this distinction.

Sentience and other measurements of sufficient intellectual complexity are
the essential foundations for a criteria of moral status (1). This challenges
ethicists to define the observable empirical conditions of sentience, the most
important of which is a demonstrable intelligence. But the identification of intelligence relies on the distinction
between entities which are capable of reasoning and those that are not, and if
reasoning is synonymous with logic, then the distinction becomes impossible and
the project of sentience fails before it can even begin.

Traditional definitions of logic often conflate it with
reasoning and inference, as when Patrick Hurley defines logic as “the organized
body of knowledge, or science, that evaluates arguments.” (2) If an inference
represents the movement from premises to conclusion, then it
appears possible to provide a comprehensive definition of argumentation without
reference to reasoning at all.

Is it necessary that an intelligence is also a reasoning agent? A pocket
calculator follows a system of logic, arranges electrical signals to model a
set of beliefs, and makes inferences to produce the output of its equations;
what is to stop an observer from saying that the calculator is properly
intelligent, and on those grounds to consider it for moral status?

Logicians such as Terence Parsons describe
“reasoning structures,” (3) spaces within
which inferences occur. This structure follows the evolution of inferences from
one to the next like the points that form a geometric line. For Parsons, reasoning is the series of
relationships which inferences have to each other, and at all times a reasoning
agent is located at some point on the line of inference. This is similar to
Gilbert Harman's assertion that reasoning is
“the process of modifying antecedent beliefs and intentions.” (4) A pocket calculator, though capable of using
inferences to produce output, is not capable of cognizing its inferences, only
of repeating them: 2 + 2 = 4 + 2 = 6 + 2 = 8 …

An implication of Parsons' criteria is that a more sophisticated
calculator could occupy the line of inference. The distinction is between a
calculator which only accepts input and one which possesses a project, which
recognizes its inferences as steps in a wider sequence towards the achievement
of a valuable end. A computer which is capable of programming itself (5), and
thereby demonstrating its agency and project, closes the gap between itself and
entities with moral status. If there is no better reason to deny computers
normative value than that they are inorganic, then the question of personhood
obtains to digital constructs. Parsons' and Harman's definition of reasoning
therefore has a direct implication on the conditions of sentience and opens the
possibility of an ethics which must take an artificial intelligence seriously.

Hurley explains that ad baculum arguments “occur whenever an
arguer poses a conclusion to another person and tells that person implicitly or
explicitly that some harm will come to them if he or she does not accept the
conclusion.”[13] I agree with most
of Hurley’s definition, except that the arguer does not state a conclusion.
Instead of stating a conclusion, the arguer uses a threat to coerce the
audience into engaging in the behavior suggested by the arguer.

The audiences’ response to the
threat is based on various factors, which include: (i) the arguer’s use of
insufficient evidence, (ii) the credibility of the threat, (iii) the proximity
of danger, and (iv) the ability to easily avoid harm. The arguer’s goal through
the use of ad baculum arguments is to
convince the audience to engage in the behavior suggested by the arguer. I
argue that these four components are necessary conditions for structuring a
successful ad baculum argument.

Insufficient evidence provides a claim, which implements an
emotional appeal, and is constructed by the arguer in order to manipulate the
audiences’ behavior. The arguer uses insufficient evidence when they cannot
provide a logical reason as to why the audience should comply with what they
want, and so the arguer will use insufficient evidence to convince the audience
not to behave as the arguer wants them to.[14] In other words,
insufficient evidence is used to support poor reasoning. In ad baculum arguments, the insufficient
evidence appeals to fear. If the arguer is to say, “If you tell the boss I
missed work yesterday, I will lose my job. Furthermore, my family will go
hungry,” it would qualify as an appeal to pity.[15] This is another
form of insufficient evidence because it involves appealing to emotions.
Instead of appealing to fear, it appeals to guilt.[16]

If ad baculum
arguments are to be successful, they must appeal emotionally to the audience by
delivering a threat. For threats to be effective, they must identify with
psychological discomfort and an unwanted outcome against the interest of the
audience. The threat presents the audience with a choice, to either engage or
not engage in the behavior the arguer wants them to. This decision to comply
with the arguer’s request is based on the credibility of the threat. Force is a
necessary component in delivering an effective and appealing threat; its proper
use makes some threats stronger than others. It also shows to be more
compelling when the insufficient evidence provided in the case is strong. This
provides the audience with a stronger inclination toward the likelihood of the
unwanted consequence actually occurring.

The American Psychological Association defines fear as “a
rational reaction to an objectively identified external danger that may induce
a person to flee or attack in self-defense.”[17]Based
on this definition, I would like to address the concept of danger with the same
concepts in this definition, for one fears the possibility of danger. Danger
necessarily involves perceived outcomes based on rational behavioral-reactions,
proximity to the audience, and the degree to which one would engage in
self-defensive strategies to avoid it.

The presence of danger poses a threat to self-sustainment
and/or some part to existence, or existence as a whole. Danger is the threat
operating on the threat and they are dependent on perception and emotional
reactions. Pfau references Aristotle’s claim that “emotions are permeated by
reason” in his essay.[18] If one experiences an event where danger is
proximal, chances are that they would not wish to experience that same event
again, for when one faces the possibility of danger, one perceives it as a
threat and experiences psychological discomfort. When talking about danger and
its influence on the audience, it is important to identify what I am talking
about. I refer to this object which presents danger as the fear-object.
Fear-objects introduce danger to the audience. These fear-object are anything
(events, persons, etc.) which the audience perceives to be dangerous. When the
audience is confronted with danger, one tailors their behaviors in order to
avoid presupposed consequences which the danger underscores.

Harm is the permanent loss of some aspect of one’s
existence, whether it is bodily functioning or the continuation of a positive
experience significant to one’s existence. From this, harm appears to always,
in every case, allude to an unwanted consequence. Harm is something I believe
one will tailor any actions towards eliminating the thought of, and in doing so
is behaving rationally. “Witte’s research indicated that fear appeals can be
effective, but only under two conditions: (1) the threat must be credible, so
that the respondent takes it as a real danger to him or her, and (2) the action
recommended to deter the threat must be perceived by the respondent as feasible
and easy to carry out.”[19]

When the audience sees that the fear is both relevant to
them and also harm is easy to avoid, they are more likely to comply with the
arguer. In this moment, the arguer is either victorious or fails in convincing
the audience of their argument. If the ad
baculum argument is successful, the audience will comply with the arguer.

Matt
Luz is a student at MCLA

_______________________

Friends

J. Stanley Yake

The hills pass by in radiant dress.

The Indian Summer sun

Bejewels the softened contours of these friends.

Their scattered oranges

Set the darkened greens to rest.

Their yellow greens lay open doors;

They beckon as we past.

We stop a while for track repairs.

A moving freight

For minutes draws a horizontal line

And sets afloat those colored invitations.

The gentle shoreline soon returns

And nature’s softness quickens as we move.

But West Point squares the shoreline meant for trees,

For gentle lines and natural grace.

It’s flat, wide walls and perfect angles

Drive the concrete down and up

And back and forth on every side.

No graceful rooting here;

No going where the goings good

For self-fulfillment.

No luck personal growth

From soil enriched by fruits of former years,

By moving toward the sun, or toward the water,

Or toward the other good we need to save our lives.

No. Here the concrete buttresses against attack

Stake out the boundaries of the world:

The place the flag’s unfurled.

These are not the Palisades,

The natural comfort of the river guest.

These are not the stolen parks

That structure evening trysts

For timid wanderers.

No.---

This is the call to arms!

The definition of the enemy

Just outside the walls.

This is protection from the man-made!

But who or what protects from the protection?

These golden, gorgeous hills

Invite the strangers in,

Provide some warmth to passers by

And sustenance to rooted trees.

What warmth could come from definitions?

What strength when social roots are sheared

By concrete slabs,

When flags exclude and push away?

The Indian Summer sun

Bejewels our social roots

With colored warmth and synergistic life.

It covers o’er the reckless growth of shoots,

Protects from definition’s strife.

I’ll take these shaded, green and golden hills,

These Palisades, this flowing river’s open doors.

I’ll take the invitation every time.

I’ll take the splendor in the grass,

The Wordsworth joy at nature’s call.

I’ll move with strangers through the pass,

And live with them outside the wall.

[1] I take the issue to
be that we cannot derive a non-vacuous, action-directing normative conclusion
from any set of purely descriptive (that is, non-moral, non-normative)
claims. The qualification “non-vacuous”
follows from the many successful efforts, beginning with Prior (1960) validly
to provide clever (yet apparently vacuous, non-instructive, or
non-action-guiding counterexamples to Hume (see Guevara, 2008). For example:

1. Either the moon is made of cheese or you ought to
respect your mother.

2. The moon is not made of cheese.

3. Therefore, you ought to respect your mother.

The argument is formally valid (Either A or
B/not-A//B), and appears to derive an ought-statement from a set of
is-statements; yet the argument offers no compelling basis for accepting the
normative conclusion beyond the insistent formal mechanisms of logic. Furthermore, we may freely substitute any
(repugnant or particularistic) ought-statement for B without loss of validity:

1. Either the moon is made of cheese or you ought to
insult your mother.

2. The moon is not made of cheese.

3. Therefore, you ought to insult your mother.

[2] In an earlier paper
(1995) which Silliman references, I argue that the is-ought gap is clearest
when attempting to get from is to ought in deductive contexts (a process I
called “get-D”), while suggesting that one might “get-ND” (“get in some
non-deductive sense”) from one to the other (in an explanation, for
instance). I never mention induction in
that earlier work, but assume that abduction (which only some take to be a
species of inductive inference) may at times appear to bridge the gap, where,
for instance, actually having obligations to one’s mother best explains some
other observed phenomenon. But in these
cases, the bridging occurs not on the basis of some tacit normativity in the
premises, but in the process of clarifying an otherwise unexplained
observation. Peirce first described abduction (later dubbed “retroduction”) as
involving “some very curious circumstance, which would be explained by the supposition
that it was the case of a certain general rule, and thereupon adopt that
supposition” (1998, p. 189). Here is his
attempted formalization of abduction:

1. The surprising fact, C, is observed.

2. But, if H were true, C would be a matter of course,

3. hence. There is reason to suspect that H is true.
(p. 231).

Most commentators agree that, in affirming the
consequent, abduction resists successful formalization. I’ll leave it to the reader to solve these
and other riddles of abduction and to apply the results to Silliman’s examples.
(See Plutynsky for a list of worries attending the formalization and
justification of abduction.)

[3] Silliman at least
momentarily appears to agree: “By the definition of deduction, nothing can
emerge in the conclusion that was not already contained in the premises, so
unless there are at least tacitly normative elements in the premises, a
normative conclusion will be invalid.”
Serving as a clear example of the “permanent tension” I note above, he
prefaces this Humean insight with this contradictory assertion: “on [Hume’s]
account, no genuine (i.e., deductive) reasoning process can get us from purely
descriptive premises to prescriptive conclusions. I argue to the contrary, even in the case of deduction, at least
in real-world reasoning….” (emphases mine). Notice that the final proviso
regarding “real world reasoning,” in underscoring either the tacit normativity
of premises or the processes of argument construction which, in his words,
“imbues” reasoning with irreducible normativity, does not violate but actually
presupposes Hume’s position on the is-ought gap.

[4] And not, as the
newly embrained yet still incompetent scarecrow in The Wizard of Oz would have
it: "The sum of the square roots of any two sides of an isosceles triangle
is equal to the square root of the remaining side."

[8] John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Oxford: Oxford University Press 1971, 24-25.

[9] Both stories also can be found in
Michael Sandel’s Justice: What’s The
Right Thing To Do? New York: Farrar,
Straus and Giroux, 2009, 31-35, 40-41. See also –The Illustrated London News, September 20, 1884

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Since 1993, the Philosophy Program at MCLA has published Thesis XII: A Philosophical Review as an open forum promoting respectful philosophical exchanges among students, faculty, alumni, and the public. Submissions reflect a diversity of disciplinary perspectives, philosophical approaches, and topics. Those new to the discipline are especially encouraged to participate.